The Wall Street Journal - 14.03.2020 - 15.03.2020

A14| Saturday/Sunday, March 14 - 15, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Giving players permission

to depart is a recognition

that baseball’s hiatus almost

certainly won’t be short. It

also means that whenever

baseball does pinpoint a tar-

get date for opening day, the

teams will have to regroup

and have what will amount

to an abbreviated second

spring training so players

can prepare their bodies for

real games. The length of

that period will depend on

how long the shutdown lasts.

Teams also expressed con-

cern about the possibility of

foreign players leaving the

country, given the uncer-

tainty surrounding travel in

the near future.

Conversations between

MLB and the MLBPA will

continue through the week-

end. Chief among the issues:

how player salaries and ser-

vice time will be handled in

a short season.

The NBA and NHL are in

an especially strange place

because of the timing of

their sports. Most basketball

and hockey teams have

played 60-some of their 82

regular season games.

NBA commissioner Adam

Silver said Thursday that his

league will stay on hiatus for

at least 30 days and left

open the possibility that the

suspension could be much

longer. NBA players have

been advised to remain in

their home markets and not

hold practices or group

workouts for now.

The NHL sent a memo to

players on Thursday advising

them to stay home and await

further instruction within 24

hours. The league has ad-

vised players to stay in the

cities where their teams

compete or, in the case of

players recently traded, at

their permanent residence.

The NHL said players should

remain in North America.

The Events That Led to a Shut Down

A top health official’s candid remarks caught the NBA by surprise. By the next day, most U.S. sports were suspended.

SPORTS

Players at spring-training camps have been advised to go home.

SUE OGROCKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

conflict with the prevailing social

norms. And they were spurred into

actions that might have saved lives.

“Others in the public will take

their lead from us,” NBA commis-

sioner Adam Silver said on Thurs-

day night.

The 36 hours in which every-

thing changed for American sports

kicked into overdrive when Groth-

man, a Wisconsin conservative who

reliably votes with his party, posed

the question that he didn’t expect

to make such an impact because he

suspected he knew the answer.

He was wrong.

Fauci, the 79-year-old infectious

disease expert who has served six

U.S. presidents and distinguished

himself as the most influential per-

son in American public health, bur-

nished his reputation during his

work in the early days of the AIDS

epidemic. As a child in the 1940s

and 1950s, he was obsessed with

sports and he idolized Joe DiMag-

gio and Mickey Mantle, the rare

Yankees die-hard among Dodgers

fans in Brooklyn.

He played baseball and football,

but he always had a soft spot for

basketball. He was even the captain

of his high school’s basketball

team—even if he was one of the

smallest guys on the court.

“I don’t think I would have any

chance of playing basketball if I

were in high school now,” he said

in 1989 for a National Institutes of

Health oral history.

But this diminutive high-school

basketball player, a man perceived

as marginalized in the Trump ad-

ministration’s response to corona-

virus, would change the course of

sports history.

WHEN ALL OF AMERICA’S

professional leagues ceased

operations this week be-

cause of the coronavirus epi-

demic, Major League Base-

ball took an optimistic

stance. It announced that the

regular season would be de-

layed, but only by a mini-

mum of two weeks, giving

hope that games could be

played as early as the sec-

ond week of April.

Early Friday morning,

multiple people in the indus-

try said that the best-case

scenario was already being

judged unrealistic. May was

more likely, they said. By the

afternoon, the situation

changed again: After initially

planning to keep teams near

their spring training facili-

ties in Florida and Arizona,

MLB and the players’ union

agreed to let players leave.

The situation reflects

questions all of the leagues

face: Where should players

go during the hiatus and

what can they do?

After a meeting between

MLB and the MLBPA, the

union sent a memo to its

members giving players

three options: return to their

homes; go to the city their

team plays in; or stay in

camp. Players who remain

will have access to amenities

like medical treatment and

the weight room, but no for-

mal workouts will be held.

MLB Sends Its Players Home

Weather

Shown are today’s noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.

City Hi Lo W Hi Lo W City Hi LoW Hi LoW

Today Tomorrow Today Tomorrow

City Hi Lo W Hi Lo W

Anchorage 24 10 s 24 14 pc

Atlanta 72 55 c 68 48 r

Austin 82 63 c 77 65 c

Baltimore 56 39 pc 52 33 pc

Boise 55 40 sh 56 36 c

Boston 53 33 s 44 27 s

Burlington 45 21 s 31 16 s

Charlotte 62 50 c 55 42 r

Chicago 38 32 sn 43 30 s

Cleveland 41 30 pc 40 28 s

Dallas 74 54 t 68 58 c

Denver 50 29 s 58 33 pc

Detroit 43 27 s 43 25 s

Honolulu 81 70 sh 80 70 sh

Houston 81 66 c 82 63 c

Indianapolis 40 30 c 45 28 s

Kansas City 40 30 c 46 34 pc

Las Vegas 65 52 c 69 49 pc

Little Rock 58 41 t 55 42 c

Los Angeles 62 53 sh 62 50 sh

Miami 84 72 pc 85 70 pc

Milwaukee 37 30 c 39 30 s

Minneapolis 35 24 pc 41 33 pc

Nashville 56 41 r 56 40 pc

New Orleans 82 65 c 80 65 pc

New York City 54 38 pc 50 32 s

Oklahoma City 61 39 r 53 44 c

Omaha 38 25 sn 44 31 pc

Orlando 88 64 pc 89 66 pc

Philadelphia 55 39 pc 52 32 pc

Phoenix 71 55 pc 76 56 pc

Pittsburgh 45 29 r 47 31 pc

Portland, Maine 51 26 s 42 20 s

Portland, Ore. 46 30 r 46 30 sh

Sacramento 55 45 sh 56 41 r

St. Louis 39 31 r 47 34 s

Salt Lake City 62 48 pc 66 46 pc

San Francisco 57 48 sh 57 45 r

SantaFe 5731pc 6335pc

Seattle 44 31 r 46 33 pc

Sioux Falls 39 22 c 44 32 pc

Wash., D.C. 58 43 pc 55 39 pc

Amsterdam 51 45 c 54 41 c

Athens 73 54 pc 69 49 sh

Baghdad 74 54 sh 73 56 pc

Bangkok 98 82 pc 91 80 t

Beijing 60 39 s 62 31 s

Berlin 44 31 pc 51 38 pc

Brussels 51 44 c 56 41 pc

Buenos Aires 77 65 t 72 65 r

Dubai 87 73 c 85 70 pc

Dublin 52 39 c 48 32 sh

Edinburgh 50 41 sh 49 31 sh

Frankfurt 51 35 pc 56 39 pc

Geneva 53 35 pc 58 37 s

Havana 88 64 s 89 64 s

Hong Kong 75 65 c 72 66 pc

Istanbul 59 47 pc 54 40 sh

Jakarta 90 77 c 90 76 t

Jerusalem 57 51 sh 61 49 pc

Johannesburg 80 58 t 84 60 s

London 56 46 sh 53 39 sh

Madrid 72 45 pc 69 42 r

Manila 94 78 pc 91 78 pc

Melbourne 62 51 pc 67 51 pc

Mexico City 80 55 t 79 53 t

Milan 52 42 sh 57 35 s

Moscow 43 21 sn 29 17 sn

Mumbai 91 75 pc 94 78 pc

Paris 52 44 c 59 42 pc

Rio de Janeiro 84 75 pc 86 75 pc

Riyadh 82 63 pc 84 61 pc

Rome 61 46 pc 64 42 pc

San Juan 82 73 sh 82 72 pc

Seoul 48 32 s 46 24 pc

Shanghai 58 44 pc 66 44 pc

Singapore 91 79 pc 90 79 t

Sydney 6762sh 6864sh

Taipei City 65 56 r 71 57 s

Tokyo 50 41 r 52 41 pc

Toronto 42 24 c 37 23 s

Vancouver 42 27 pc 44 28 pc

Warsaw 4020pc 4228s

Zurich 50 31 pc 56 33 s

Today Tomorrow

U.S. Forecasts

International

City Hi LoW Hi LoW

s...sunny; pc... partly cloudy; c...cloudy; sh...showers;

t...t’storms; r...rain; sf...snow flurries; sn...snow; i...ice

Today Tomorrow

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O

n Wednesday, when a

Republican congress-

man used his time in a

public coronavirus

briefing to ask a top

U.S. health official about sports, he

thought he would get a calming re-

sponse.

The Ivy League had recently can-

celed the rest of its season. The

National Basketball Association

was still playing in full arenas.

“Is the NBA underreacting,” Rep.

Glenn Grothman asked, “or is the

Ivy League overreacting?”

The unsettling answer that Dr.

Anthony Fauci offered to Congress

changed everything over a dizzying

24 hours that will be remembered

as the most extraordinary day for

American sports in decades.

“We would recommend that

there not be large crowds,” said

Fauci, the director of the National

Institute of Allergy and Infectious

Diseases, an expert who has been a

fixture of American

public health for

nearly four decades.

“If that means not

having any people in

the audience when the

NBA plays, so be it.”

Fauci’s candid re-

marks caught the NBA

and some Trump ad-

ministration officials

by surprise. But they

were proven to be

prescient almost im-

mediately.

By the end of

Wednesday, the NBA

season was not just

spectator-less. It was

suspended.

What happened in

between was that

Utah Jazz center Rudy

Gobert tested positive for the virus

and became forever known as the

patient zero in American profes-

sional sports.

Less than a day after Fauci was

in front of Congress answering

questions about the NBA, the

league had made the decision to

shut itself down for at least 30

days, several teams were in self-

quarantine, and the entire sports

industry was being shaken to its

core.

A series of rapidly accelerating

events beyond the control of Amer-

ican sports leagues forced their

hands as they scrambled to make

contingency plans that would have

allowed them to keep playing

games in empty arenas for as long

as possible—until, suddenly, not

even that worst-case scenario was

realistic.

The chain reaction unfolded with

such speed that the NBA franchises

didn’t even halt games in progress

once the season was suspended in-

definitely.

After defying recommendations

from mayors and governors, the

leagues and teams had no choice

once cities officially banned mass

gatherings in a bid to slow trans-

missions of the virus, Fauci told

the country that it was irresponsi-

ble to play in front of fans and, fi-

nally, the first professional athletes

tested positive and sparked fears of

a spread through the nation’s

locker rooms.

The NBA’s action was the tipping

point that prompted a wave of sim-

ilar moves from other sports and

shocked many Americans into pay-

ing attention to a global pandemic

that has now disrupted everyday

life in the U.S.

The suspensions continued on

Thursday with the National Hockey

League, Major League Baseball and,

finally, the NCAA tournament.

By the end of the day, the imme-

diate future of sports was bleak.

But the leagues were no longer in

Fauci paused for a moment

Wednesday before he offered a

characteristically blunt response

that all but forced the leagues to

take their initial actions.

Grothman said in an interview

that he’d been struck by the differ-

ence between the Ivy League and

the NBA’s actions.

He did not anticipate that Fauci

would raise alarms by calling on

the NBA to ban crowds. He as-

sumed that he would say the

calmer approach was the right one.

And he remained surprised when

he learned of the season’s indefi-

nite suspension.

“Because one player’s got it?”

Grothman asked Wednesday. “I’m

surprised that Americans are will-

ing to change their lives so drasti-

cally so quickly.”

But hours before the NBA put its

season on hiatus, the impact of

Fauci’s word had quickly spread.

Fauci’s public remarks to Con-

gress gave the NBA no choice but

to accelerate its contingency plan-

ning at a time when teams were

struggling to comprehend the

scope of the global pandemic.

They coincided with the city of

San Francisco prohibiting crowds

of more than 1,000 people and the

Golden State Warriors making the

decision to play a game scheduled

for Thursday in an empty down-

town arena. California Gov. Gavin

Newsom had criticized the fran-

chise for not coming to a similar

decision sooner, while Ohio Gov.

Mike DeWine pressured the profes-

sional teams in his state by vowing

to outlaw mass gatherings if they

did not adhere to his strong recom-

mendation a day earlier.

By the time the league’s owners

ended a conference call on Wednes-

day afternoon, the NCAA had

moved forward on plans to hold

March Madness without fans, and

the league was hoping to decide on

Thursday how to proceed with the

rest of the season.

That decision was made for

them when Donnie Strack, the

Oklahoma City Thunder’s top medi-

cal official, sprinted onto the court

seconds before tipoff Wednesday

night as soon as he found out that

Gobert, who was out with an undi-

agnosed illness, had tested positive

for the virus. The players were sud-

denly pulled off the court, and the

season was abruptly suspended.

“If you wanted to dramatize the

situation for maximum effect and

get people focused on it, this is

what you would have done,” said

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt.

That moment would mark the

end of the NBA for at least the next

month and shock the rest of the

country into paying attention to an

escalating crisis. “There’s no ques-

tion there is a public-health upside

to all these cancellations,” Holt

said.

The league had advised teams

last week to make plans by Tues-

day that included securing nearby

testing facilities, and health provid-

ers came to the Chesapeake Energy

Arena to administer Covid-19 test-

ing for the entire Jazz traveling

party.

The ripple effects of Gobert’s

positive test were felt immediately.

Utah’s entire traveling party was

tested for the virus—Jazz star Don-

ovan Mitchell was the only person

who tested positive—and teams

that played the Jazz recently were

told to self-isolate in a sign of the

abundance of caution that has

swept the league in the time since

games stopped being played.

As the NCAA tournament was

canceled, the NHL suspended its

season and Major League Baseball

postponed games, the NBA made

plans to be shut down for at least

30 days, while acknowledging it

could be much longer. What comes

next is so uncertain that Silver said

he suspended the season because

he didn’t want to lose it entirely—

though he left open the possibility

that it could be.

It began to feel as if something

else that Fauci said in his congres-

sional briefing the day before was

becoming reality.

“Is the worst yet to come?” Rep.

Carolyn Maloney asked him.

“Yes,” Fauci said. “It is.”

ByBen Cohen,

Louise Radnofskyand

Natalie Andrews

BRYAN TERRY/ASSOCIATED PRESS, TOM WILLIAMS/ZUMA PRESS

Officials, above, gather before the Thunder-Jazz game was postponed. Anthony

Fauci, left, had told Congress that the NBA was underreacting to the virus.

ByJared Diamond,

Laine Higgins

andBen Cohen

30

The minimum amount of days the

NBA has decided to shutdown